Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1080/20008066.2025.2500141

Publication Title

European Journal of Psychotraumatology

Volume

16

Issue

1

Pages

2500141 (1-16)

Abstract

Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and cannabis use disorder (CUD) are commonly comorbid and are associated with many negative public health outcomes. One plausible explanation for this comorbidity comes from a self-medication framework, which suggests people use cannabis to cope with PTSD symptoms. Despite theoretical and empirical evidence for PTSD-related cannabis use to cope, no measure of this construct exists.

Objective: We sought to address this gap by developing and validating a novel measure of PTSD-specific cannabis self-medication, which we have termed the Trauma-Related Cannabis Use to Cope (TRCU) questionnaire.

Method: The psychometric properties of the TRCU and how it relates to relevant constructs were examined among a diverse sample of 345 trauma-exposed undergraduate cannabis users (M(age) = 22.19, SD = 6.45; 46.7% White; 79.7% woman-identifying) using structural equation modelling in Mplus.

Results: Study findings indicate that the TRCU is a more precise and targeted measure of cannabis use to cope with PTSD symptomology, as compared to existing measures of cannabis coping motives. Furthermore, our data support the use of the TRCU as a four-factor scale, assessing cannabis use to cope with the four DSM-5 PTSD symptom clusters (χ²(164) = 257.83, p <  .001; CFI = .969; TLI = .965; RMSEA = .041). We also found strong evidence supporting the construct and criterion validity of the TRCU, specifically in relation to PTSD symptoms, cannabis use, and cannabis-related issues and dependence.

Conclusions: Results support the use of the TRCU in future self-medication research and as a clinically useful screening tool for identifying individuals with PTSD who are at risk for developing CUD.

Highlights:

  • Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and cannabis use disorder (CUD) often occur together, and this study suggests people may use cannabis to cope with PTSD symptoms. However, no specific tool existed to measure this behaviour until now.
  • This study introduces the Trauma-Related Cannabis Use to Cope (TRCU) questionnaire, a novel tool for identifying cannabis use as a coping mechanism for PTSD symptoms.
  • The TRCU provides a more targeted measure than existing tools, which can help clinicians better identify individuals with PTSD at risk for developing cannabis use disorder.

Rights

© 2025 The Authors.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the authors or with their consent.

Data Availability

Article states: "Raw data were generated at Old Dominion University. Derived data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on request.

All relevant ethical safeguards have been met in relation to experimentation including consent and review by the Institutional Review Board at Old Dominion University. Due to the collection of completely de-identified data, the study was deemed exempt.

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request."

Original Publication Citation

Hawn, S. E., Hicks, T. A., Latourrette, C., Thomas, A., Chaname, D., Ehlke, S., & Powers Lott, A. (2025). Psychometric evaluation of a novel measure of trauma-related cannabis use to cope. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 16(1), 1-16, Article 2500141. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008066.2025.2500141

ORCID

0000-0001-8501-4169 (Hawn), 0000-0001-7288-2418 (Ehlke)

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